Category: Books & Poetry
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Haitian Folk Tales: The Snake and the Pauper
Jacques Fleury Spare Change News It was a beautiful sunny day in the forest of Carfou, a small town in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. The birds were chirping and the trees were swaying in a sing-song sort of way. Di Dim, a local farmer, strolled down the winding dirt road, occasionally stumbling…
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A Holocaust of Toads
By Doug Holder As boys- we dropped rocks a flurry of bomblets on a passing phalanx of toads. Commanders for once free from the clamp of parental constraint punch drunk with the notion of our control of fate life death. And like mini Dr. Mengeles, we experimented stuffing firecrackers down their twitching throats and watched…
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Learning from the Sixties: A Talk with John Maher
A new book, Learning From The Sixties: Memoir Of An Organizer, is intended to pass on the lessons learned along the way by anti-Vietnam War activist and political organizer John Maher, a longtime Cambridge resident, to a new generation. In the book, Maher describes his journey from student activist, a leader of the New Left,…
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Poetry: Westwood Lodge, 1980–1990
Westwood Lodge, 1980–1990 By Sarah Hanna And then again, you go west, to that perennial Resort at the end of the bending street, row of pines, Where Sexton strolled through noon, made mocassins, And danced in a circle: the Summer Hotel. Why every tumid season, cicadas burning blue, Beetles mounting one another, chewing all the…
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Tales from the Wandering: Stories based on the lives of the homeless in Boston
Tales from the Wandering Stories based on the lives of the homeless in Boston Spotting Your Own Skin For the better part of the next ten years, the Black Smoke stayed within orbit around a variety of couches and TV screens in the tristate area. In the beginning, he’d pour out of the room and…
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Poetry At Occupy Boston
Following this short piece is a poem I read at Occupy Boston Poetry. As I walked into the camping area I was impressed at the organization of the occupation. The people had a logistics tent, a media tent and a staging area where they would hold meetings and entertainment. It was truly an honor to…
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The Dark Night of the Soul
Benny stares through his basement window and he can feel his heart rejoicing once again by the absence of the sun. Sunlight has become his worst enemy since his parents died, his wife left him and his only son was officially declared M.I.A. while fighting the war in Iraq. These days, he hardly leaves his…
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Street Logic: A Sociological Novel of Homelessness in Boston
[img_assist|nid=284|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=494|height=640] Steve Sundberg’s recently published novel Street Logic is a self-proclaimed sociological examination of the lives of the countless men and women who have called the streets of Boston home. The story tactfully invokes the need for community involvement to alleviate the woes of those in need, reminding the reader that we can all play…